Apple employees outnumbered customers at Vision Pro launch in San Francisco’s Union Square::Apple’s new Vision Pro headset drew a sparse but eager crowd to San Francisco’s Union Square on Friday, for pickups and demos.
It’s $3500 of course there wasn’t a “mob scene” for it.
Yeah, they’re pricing themselves out of their own market. It’s been happening for years but the recent economic shifts are making it more apparent.
The MacBook Air was $3200 (which is more like $4500 in 2024 dollars) when it was announced in 2008. Early adopters pay for the future of these things and 200,000 AVPs have already been sold.
I’m almost thinking that Apple went too deep into AR/VR when it looked like there was a market for it. So over a year ago they knew this was dead-on-arrival. They’d already committed the R&D and all the facilities and materials for the first production run. Knowing its going to flop, and knowing they’d get only one shot to sell them, they hiked up the price to the point where they could extract the most money from diehard Apple fans before word got out it wasn’t worth it.
They sold out all 200,000 launch day units, so perhaps Apples only mistake was pricing it too low.
It’s almost, but nothing at all, like that.
Sounds like a good observation and analysis.
What’s yours?
I speculate it is a test product to work towards ubiquitous ar glasses in the future. Basically to figure out the big problems, produce a few good apps, etc. before trying to make the true product.
They have an audience that will pay $1500 for a bloody phone.
You will notice through the magic of math, that 3500 is over twice as much as 1500 for a device you cannot carry with you everywhere everyday. The competition space for the Vision Pro is not iPhones, but more like the iMac Pro.
Prediction: this will be considered Apple’s biggest product flop in decades, and may even unseat the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerBook_5300 for worst in company history. The whole product line will be scrapped before 2027.
Fortunately they have the cash to burn on projects like this to see what takes.
I’ll post this in !prediction@lemmy.ca so someone can call me on it one day ;)
I heartily disagree. This is a 1.0 product, and though it’s deeply flawed in so many ways, it also nailed interactions that other companies have struggled with. They’re going to iterate and pivot on this platform for the next few years (and sell cheaper models) and they will find the sweet spot. This platform is here to stay.
This is a 1.0 product, and though it’s deeply flawed in so many ways
So they release incomplete product.
Other comnies: we are making game for vr and will release it any second now. Aaaany second now. Done. By the way, we just releasing state-of-art vr set Valve Index with base stations and controllers that greatly improves over other vr headsets that costs like average headset.
They’ve sold 200k preordered as of a couple of weeks ago.
That’s not very many for an Apple launch, is it?
Over $700 million in preorders for something that expensive is massive
I would bet that R&D for something like this must be around several billion dollars, so this is not even breaking even when you add in marketing and production costs.
I’ll take that bet. I’ve had a Vive for years, Apple’s effort addresses all of the issues I have with that headset. I’m excited to see what devs are going to come up with, there’s going to be some amazing apps coming out.
I worry that it’s a bit chicken and egg. I’ve a psvr and psvr2, for reference. Without millions of users, the market for a range of quality apps is poor. Then, of those quality apps, only a few will be truly great, even less revolutionary enough to sell a $3500 headset for one.
This is a big step up from existing VR headsets, it can do things they can’t, so I’m excited to see what devs can do.
And that’s the big dead on arrival red flag. There’s already some ecosystem for VR/AR, specially in games. But Apple is not compatible with any of that. If people could buy a VisionPro and instantly start installing and using the software they already own and have been using for a few years but with better hardware and a better experience, the story would be different and this would be a runaway success. But this is one of the cases where the walled garden and overall hostility towards developers from Apple will bite them in the ass. A few massive players have straight up refused to port their software for the Vision Pro, and hardware platforms live or die on their supported software. This is one where Apple can’t carry the whole burden of development of apps since they are already bogged down with keeping up and coming up with an entirely new OS and an entirely new UX. If they don’t open the garden and let help in, the Vision Pro will forever be a curious toy, not the productivity machine they want it to be.
If they don’t open the garden and let help in
What does that look like to you? I’m not sure what it is you want Apple to do.
Why do you think there will be amazing apps? Low volume means expensive apps that don’t make a lot of money for the devs compared to, say, the much larger VR market.
There will be things like this:
If Apple can figure out how to license and broadcast immersive video live from sporting events, these things are going to sell like crazy once the non-pro, cheaper version comes out.
That already existed on psvr 4 years ago and I think take up was minimal. Again, it could be something that apple can popularise, now the technology is better, but it won’t be ground breaking.
The groundbreaking part is to take that tech, refine it, and sell a metric fuckton of hardware. Groundbreaking is seeing all these disparate, unconnected technologies come together into something new.
I’d love to fiddle with one, but they don’t have very many demo slots. Only 8 an hour at that flagship store.
Also, I don’t have the cash to buy one, so the demo would purely be to address some curiosity. I’ll probably just wait until I can walk in and do a demo in a few months.
I wonder if it’s fully locked down like ipad, or more relaxed like a Mac where you have root access and can sideload any app you want. If it’s the latter, my interest will be significantly increased.
lol you’re dreaming if you think Apple is going to introduce a new computing platform and not wall its garden off so it can take a cut of all sales. That’s just how it is now, and every year they take a little freedom away from macOS. Mac users haven’t had true root for years.
Aren’t demos by appointment only? What a trash article.
Apple died with Steve Jobs. Maybe Tim Cook should try carrot juice, because I haven’t seen any real vision from Apple since then.
Every year it’s just small improvement over product lines that already exist. Sure I appreciate to have widget on my screen now but where are the iPods, iPhone, MacBooks of today ? I mean revolutionary product that gave people lots of confidence into tech.
By now I would have think Apple would be already deep into artificial intelligence but no.
About the Vision Pro, what would Jobs (who refused to have stylus on iPad because it’s cumbersome) think of it ? Heavy, battery doesn’t last and you got a fucking wire constantly connecting the helmet to the battery ??
Honestly I don’t get it, it’s like headless chickens running in circle at Apple headquarters.
The Vision Pro is literally a new product line that has multiple innovations over current competitors.
Artificial intelligence is such a buzzword these days it’s tough to determine what your meaning is here. Apple uses machine learning all over the place.
As far as actual artificial intelligence - machine consciousness akin to a human mind - how would you know? Apple doesn’t make a habit of announcing their ventures before their marketable.
Without their respective batteries, the weight of the Meta Quest Pro is 522 grams. The Vision Pro is 532.
The three batteries in the power pack are 3000mah each. Again, not sure if the complaint here is overall capacity, or that the headset is power inefficient. These could be valid if they’d implemented recharging in a worse manner, but it can be charged while in use by either another battery bank or an electrical socket.
Ignoring the contradiction on Steve Jobs, yes he was persistent in his vision, but he also understood the physical limits of technology. A stylus at the time of the original iPad would not have been a slim, precision tool. Look at the Wacom CTH661 - bit cumbersome if you ask me.
There are criticisms to be made of the Vision Pro, and certainly of Apple, but you’ve made none of them here.
